Arkansas bill aims to protect minors by imposing minimum age restrictions
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a new bill on Wednesday that requires parents and guardians to consent before a child under 18 opens an account with social media. Arkansas is now the second US state to impose minimum age restrictions on social media.
SB 396 – otherwise known as the Social Media Safety Act – goes into effect in September and aims to protect minors online.
Utah’s Social Media Regulation Act, which was signed into law last month, shares some similarities with this new legislation. To open a social media account, users must be 18 years old. Social media companies are responsible for verifying the age of new users using personal information and government-issued identification.
However, some last-minute amendments outline exceptions to the definition of a “social networking company.” As Techdirt writes, the bill includes several strange caveats.
Companies that exclusively offer “interacting [sic] gaming, virtual gaming, or an online service that allows the creation and uploading of content” related to it aren’t counted, for instance, possibly excluding services like Twitch.
Due to exclusions for “professional networking, job skills, learning certifications, and job posting and application services,” Microsoft’s Linkedin would probably be exempt from the new restrictions.
One amendment excludes any “social media company that allows a user to generate short video clips of dancing, voiceovers, or other acts of entertainment,” which services like Snapchat and TikTok would likely fall under.
Because the rest of Google’s business portfolio includes cloud storage services and social media platforms, another exclusion excludes businesses that provide cloud storage services and make less than 25 percent of their revenue from social media platforms.
Arkansas requires users to be 18 to use social media unless the app is exclusively focused on sharing short form videos of dancing, etc or the company makes less than 25% of revenue from social media.
— Dare Obasanjo (@Carnage4Life) April 13, 2023
This exempts TikTok & YouTube. Impressive lobbying.https://t.co/3oDGbx0bwk
Additionally, smaller platforms such as Parler, Gab, and Truth Social won’t be affected since they don’t meet the $100 million gross revenue threshold. That may limit the new age restrictions to just Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
In a statement to CNN, Senator Tyler Dees, a lead co-sponsor of the bill, said, “The purpose of this bill was to empower parents and protect kids from social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat.”
Utah and Arkansas laws have been criticized for their concerns about user privacy and for how they will be enforced.
In an interview with PBS, Arkansas state Senator Mike McKell said that the Division of Consumer Protection will be working directly with social media companies over “the next eight months to a year to develop what that looks like.”
In a Twitter post announcing that she had signed the new law, Sanders said, “For years, social media companies have gotten away with exploiting kids for profit. Not anymore.”
A child labor protection in Arkansas that required children under 16 to verify their age and obtain parental consent was rolled back last month by Sanders.
Additionally, some social media users have pointed out that Arkansas residents are permitted to marry at 17 without parental consent, despite the state’s requirement that they be 18 years old to join a social network.
